


I Wanna Live, Not Just Survive Tonight

by Willow_Angel



Category: Assassin's Creed (2016) - Fandom, Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Wanted (2008)
Genre: AU, Assassin Boyfriends, Crossover, Crossover Pairing, I hereby dub this ship Casley, I tried okay guys, M/M, Team Cherik, love me please, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 19:03:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12463926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willow_Angel/pseuds/Willow_Angel
Summary: "The most prominent thing he remembered, however, was blue eyes that sparkled like they held the stars, the way they shone with amusement and glowed through the darkness."





	I Wanna Live, Not Just Survive Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not dead guys!! WHOOP
> 
> So I noticed there was a severe lack of Casley fics and I needed some assassin boyfriends, so I asked my friends in the Team Cherik Facebook group to give me prompts, and this is the product of one of those prompts! I, uh, may or may not have any clue what I'm doing, but since this is a crossover AU I can fuzz things a bit. I TRIED OKAY, DON'T JUDGE ME TOO HARSHLY. And I, a demisexual, attempting to write the bit at the very end may have failed. Aijbsekrbgjs let me be demi in peace
> 
> Big thanks to my friends Lady_Banana and sebastian2017 for proofreading! :D
> 
> I hope you enjoy! :)
> 
> (Title from "Angel With A Shotgun" by The Cab.)

The Bleeding Effect. That’s what Sofia called it – the hallucinations and dreams that had started after he used the Animus for the first time, images of Aguilar de Nerha and dreams of his life. He struggled to control them and repress them for the longest time, but it seemed that he was finally gaining some sort of control. At the very least, he was getting used to them. The headaches weren’t as bad anymore.

When these visions in particular first started, it was all glimpses while dreaming. But after a while he began to recognise some foreign emotions, emotions that could only belong to Aguilar. He was now accustomed to the feeling of anger, hatred, and loss, but the new feelings that began to crop up – they were new and they were strange, to say the least.

Soon the dreams began to show glimpses of white cloth, and Callum could almost feel it as he remembered Aguilar running his hands over it. He remembered dark hair, so soft underneath his fingers, as Aguilar remembered combing his fingers through it in the darkness and solitude of night. The most prominent thing he remembered, however, was blue eyes that sparkled like they held the stars, the way they shone with amusement and glowed through the darkness. They were the colour of the sky in summer, and Aguilar remembered not knowing enough words to properly describe them.

And because Aguilar remembered them, Callum remembered them too.

Callum had no idea who the eyes, the hair, the cloth belonged to; he wasn’t sure he cared to find out. Callum had become so used to dealing with death and loss, but he couldn’t shake the feelings and emotions that came with the dreams of the blue eyes. He’d never felt it before, and he couldn’t find the words – in English or Spanish – to even attempt a description.

It was… a longing, almost; a longing to see those eyes again, to let them sooth him, to let them see right through him.

After one dream that Callum woke up from sweating and panting, skin tingling, that he realised what emotion he was feeling so strongly in that moment – love. Aguilar de Nerha had been in love with this blue-eyed mystery person, and Callum didn’t know the first thing about them.

It was frustrating.

The short dreams continued, and one night Callum – Aguilar, rather – heard the blue-eyed person laugh. It was beautiful, clear, like church bells ringing. Callum awoke with his heart threatening to pound through his chest, with his first thought being, ‘ _ So, it was a man that Aguilar loved.’ _

The dreams then began to bleed into visions when he was awake. He would see swishes of the too-white cloth out of the corner of his eye, and he would turn only to see nobody there. Sometimes he would swear he felt cool, foreign hands trailing down his skin as he lay in shitty motel beds, waiting for sleep to claim him. He felt warm breath against his ear as he stood and watched the city move around him.

Callum nearly saw his face once. He had been standing on the roof of a skyscraper, alone, watching the lights of the city and hearing the buzz of cars below him; watching, but not being watched. He had taken just one more step closer to the edge of the building when a clear voice spoke in elegant Spanish,  _ “Do be careful, darling.” _

He whirled around, the blade on his arm shooting out, freezing at the sight of a vision. It was of the boy in the white cloth, standing a few feet back from him. He remembered seeing the stunning blue of his eyes, but the features of the boy’s face vanished from his memory along with the vision. Callum relaxed, moving the blade back under his sleeve. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears.

What surprised Callum most was that he didn’t feel anger at the boy for sneaking up on him, or for throwing him off balance. It was like he was used to the sensation, and he found that he didn’t mind it.

Callum was rapidly becoming obsessed with the boy that haunted his dreams. When he wasn’t moving the Apple from one safe house to the next, he was trying to draw the boy. He lost count of how many times he had drawn the eyes, but he could not remember the rest of his face. On one occasion he had become so frustrated that he had thrown the pen he was using across the room, and he heard it crack as it smashed against the wall.

How had his life come to this? He spent his days trying to reach into memories that weren’t even his to try and remember what this boy looked like. He’d been dead for five hundred years, why did he even care? And yet…

And yet he  _ did _ care. He cared because he couldn’t get the damned boy out of his head, no matter how hard he tried. Whenever he got hurt, the boy was there with his smooth voice and soothing words. Callum hated how much he’d begun to accept the visions, even want them. Why couldn’t Rikkin just let him die, goddamnit?

_ “We’re timeless, my love,” _ the boy said, covering Callum’s – Aguilar’s – hand with his own.  _ “We have our whole lives ahead of us, an eternity. I spend every day waiting for you to return to me. I can wait a little longer, my dear.” _

“Why?” Callum murmured. “Are you still waiting? Who  _ are _ you?”

_ “I am yours. I am yours and you are mine; that is all that matters.” _

Callum shook his head. This didn’t make any sense – but then again, what part of his life had made sense in, well, forever? He sighed. The boy started softly humming a lullaby, eventually beginning to quietly sing, and Callum found himself drifting off to sleep.

That night, he dreamed of the boy asking him,  _ “Promise me that you will return to me in one piece?” _

He remembered a voice that could only be Aguilar’s coming out of his mouth, replying,  _ “I am an Assassin; those damned Templars will never stop me from coming back to you, my love.” _

  
  


Callum had long since begun to expect the unexpected, especially when it concerned the visions of the blue-eyed boy that was with him everywhere he went, but coming across another super-human assassin was not something he accounted for.

He was in Eastern Moravia, with the Apple secure in a pouch slung over his shoulder as he made his way through the streets. There was a monastery not far away; surely he would be safe there for a little while.

He entered the old building, keeping his head down and his hood pulled up and one hand on the pouch at all times. He passed a few people, but nobody paid him much attention as to them, he was just another straggler looking for shelter for a night. Still, Callum knew he was being watched. He looked around, pretending to look interested in the architecture, but saw nobody that would pay him any heed. He put his head down again and kept walking.

He stopped. Someone was humming, and Callum would recognise that song, that  _ voice _ , anywhere. It was the Spanish lullaby the blue-eyed boy had sung on occasion, the one that never failed to calm him. So of course, despite his better judgement, he followed the sound of the humming.

He quietly paused in the doorway of a room filled with threads. Someone was leaning over what looked like a giant loom, and this was undoubtedly the person humming. The person stopped and Callum ducked behind the doorway and out of sight. He didn’t leave, however – he had gone too long without answers as to who the blue-eyed boy was, and surely this was a better place to start than to go without. The voices were identical. The person – the man – started humming again, and Callum was so focussed on the voice that he almost didn’t hear the person sneaking up behind him.

Callum whirled around to find the barrel of a gun pointed at him, and he slammed the person’s hand up just as it fired. The bullet cracked into the ceiling and Callum was thrown back with a well-placed kick to the gut. He managed to roll himself over and back into a crouch, but his attacker already had their gun on him again and he could see their finger tightening on the trigger and his only chance was to try and block it but what did he have time to do-

He threw himself to the side, and surely that gunshot was too loud for it to have been only one gun. Callum whirled around again to see the man that had been standing over the loom now standing in the hallway with a gun in his hand and a scarf around his head, covering his hair and blocking the lower half of his face from view.

But his eyes… holy fucking  _ shit _ , it was the boy with the blue eyes.

The calm, quiet, loving boy with the blue eyes that was always dressed in soft white cloth that had haunted his dreams was alive, well, and currently wearing a brown leather jacket and was holding a gun in his hand.

_ What in the holy fuck? _

“I don’t know who you are,” Callum’s attacker growled, the voice sounding female, “but this doesn’t concern you. Stay out of this.”

“And I don’t know who you are,” the blue-eyed man replied, his rough and deep American accent surprising Callum, “and honestly I don’t give a fuck. Get out.”

“He has something I want.”

“I. Don’t. Care.”

“If you lower your gun, I’ll let you live.”

The blue-eyed man laughed. “You really don’t know who I am, do you?” He seemed almost relaxed. “I don’t know who you are, but I know  _ what _ you are. You Templars think you’re so high-and-mighty, so entitled. Guess what, fucker, you’re not. And no, before you ask, I’m not from the fancy capital-B Brotherhood.”

The woman froze, and Callum saw her gun hand shake ever so slightly. “You’re Fraternity. The Fraternity of Assassins.”

Blue-eyes tilted his head, eyes sparkling with amusement. “You didn’t think we’d let this slide, did you?”

The woman’s grip on her gun tightened in an obvious attempt to stop shaking. “You can remain neutral. Stay out of this.”

Blue-eyes raised an eyebrow. “This is the birthplace of the Fraternity. You’re on my turf now.”

It all happened in a split second: the woman’s eyes narrowed and her finger tightened on the trigger, but Blue-eyes did the same. Their bullets spun through the air and collided, splintering against each other. Before the woman could register what had happened and pull her trigger again, Blue-eyes had already placed a bullet between her eyes. She fell backwards, her eyes open and unseeing, and dark red blood pooled around her head like a hellish halo, then spilling through the uneven cracks in the floor, spreading like a spiderweb. All this, and Callum was still kneeling awkwardly on the floor, not entirely sure what to do with himself.

He tore his eyes away from the dead woman on the floor and found that Blue-eyes was staring at him with a frightening intensity. It was eerie. The eyes were exactly the same, no doubt about it, but the person they belonged to had changed, moulded over the years into someone completely different.

The soft, gentle, kind and loving boy that Aguilar de Nerha loved dearly was gone, and Callum had no idea who he was looking at now.

“Damned Templars.” Blue-eyes’ voice brought him out of his thoughts. The man’s eyes never left him, even as he tucked his gun into his jeans. “They never mind their own business, huh?”

“No,” Callum found himself answering. “No they don’t.”

“She didn’t get you, did she?” The eyes looked him up and down, searching for injury.

Other than the scrapes on his hands from when he hit the floor - and old injuries, of course - Callum could not feel any physical pain. “No, she didn’t,” he told the man, who nodded. Blue-eyes took a few steps towards him and held out a hand. Callum didn’t hesitate before taking it and allowing himself to be pulled to his feet, surprising himself. Since when was he  _ not _ wary of strangers?

Well, this blue-eyed anomaly wasn’t exactly a stranger, was he? Speaking of which, the next words out of Blue-eyes’ mouth sent him reeling.

“I’d say it’s good to see you again, but you’re not him, are you?”

Callum blinked - the man hadn’t let go of his hand. “No,” he said, his voice shaky. “I’m not.”

Blue-eyes sighed, looking at the ground. “So Aguilar really is gone, isn’t he.” It wasn’t a question.

Callum nodded. “Yes.”

Blue-eyes looked up at him again and raised an eyebrow. “So if you’re not him, who are you?” he asked.

“Callum. Callum Lynch.” Callum couldn’t bring himself to take his hand away, and Blue-eyes didn’t seem fazed by it at all.

“Nice to meet you, Callum Lynch,” the man said, the grin obvious in his voice. He finally removed his hand - Callum didn’t immediately miss the contact at all, definitely not - and gestured towards the room he had just come out of. “After you.” Callum looked back at the woman still lying dead on the floor. “Don’t worry about her,” Blue-eyes said, quickly catching onto Callum’s thoughts, “the cleanup crew will be here soon. Soon it’ll be like she was never there.”

Callum had no choice but to turn away and enter the room, Blue-eyes close behind him. Once in the room, surrounded by threads and the steady sound of the loom’s shuttle moving back and forth. He couldn’t stop himself, he had to ask, “Who are you?”

Blue-eyes stopped walking, and Callum turned around to see the intense gaze on him again. Blue-eyes reached up and pulled the scarf down from around his hair and his face - after so long, Callum finally knew what the blue-eyed boy’s face looked like, and it was  _ stunning _ . 

_ “You flatter me, my darling.” _

_ “That may be so, but I only speak the truth.” _

“Wesley Gibson,” Blue-eyes - now known as Wesley - said. “And you’re Aguilar’s descendant, aren’t you?”

“How do you-”

Wesley raised a hand, stopping him. “I know your name. I know you’re from the Brotherhood of Assassins, and I know what you’re hiding in that pouch and I know that Templar was here to get it. I know that Assassins from the Brotherhood are descendants of previous Assassins, because of the triple helix DNA you all have.”

Callum raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know who you are,” he pointed out. “All I know is your name and that you’re from something called the Fraternity of Assassins.”

Wesley smirked, just a little. “You don’t know about the Fraternity, huh?” Slightly embarrassed, Callum shook his head. Welsey was grinning now, and he tucked his hands into his jacket pockets. “There’s a lot of history behind it, but all you need to know for now is that while you have the memories of your ancestor, all my memories are mine. They belonged to me in my previous life.”

“Previous…” Callum trailed off. “Like, reincarnation?”

“Exactly like reincarnation,” Wesley nodded. “Who I was then and who I am now aren’t related by blood in any way, as far as I know - they weren’t in the habit of keeping a lot of records in the fifteenth century. It was mostly war and executions.”

Callum huffed a laugh. “Believe me, I know,” he said, a small grin finding its way onto his face. 

Wesley chuckled. “Reincarnation is a Fraternity thing, I guess, like genetic memory is a Brotherhood thing. Each creed has its own set of checkboxes you need to tick before you become an assassin.”

Callum nodded, but his mind was mostly focussed on trying to memories the features of Wesley Gibson’s face. He was a beautiful man - he could definitely tell why Aguilar had adored him so much.

But Callum was not Aguilar de Nerha. He was his own person with his own goals and his own thoughts, and Wesley was different now too. They were both very different from the forbidden lovers from the fifteenth century.

“I never knew what you looked like,” he murmured before he could stop himself. Wesley tilted his head a little, silently asking him to elaborate. “The genetic memory, the bleeding effect, it causes hallucinations; dreams and visions of my ancestor’s, Aguilar’s, memories,” he explained. A lot of them were about you. Or him, I suppose.” Wesley’s too-blue eyes were sparkling with a curiosity that was almost teasing. Fighting a blush, Callum continued, “but I never saw your face. It was always just your eyes.”

Wesley’s grin had faded, his face neutral and almost unreadable. “It was the same for you,” Wesley admitted, looking anywhere but at Callum. “Whenever the old memories of Aguilar came, I could never see his face, your face. It was always a blur. Fuckin’ annoying.” Wesley met his eyes again, and there was something foreign in them - pain? Loss? Desperation? “You look like him,” Wesley said lowly. “You’re fuckin’ identical.”

“So are you.”

_ “Your eyes carry galaxies in them. They hold the stars themselves.” _

_ “If that is true, then yours carry the summer sky, my love.” _

Wesley grinned again, then shook his head and looked down. He looked a little awkward - even his shoulders were hunched a little bit. Callum couldn’t think of anything to say, so he looked around the room. “What is this place?” he asked.

Wesley looked up at him, looking grateful for the change of subject. He straightened up and put his shoulders back, and Callum could almost  _ feel _ the easy confidence filling the other man again. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll give you a tour.”

Callum grinned, and easily fell into step beside Wesley.

  
  
  


From there on, it was one first after another.

The first time Callum had saved Wesley’s life, they were being attacked by Templars that had teamed up with rouge Fraternity members (Wesley had explained the whole Sloan situation with an obvious chip on his shoulder), and Callum had managed to cut a bullet cleanly in half before it hit Wesley.

The first time they kissed was after a close call on both of their lives, an ordeal they would loathe to speak of for a long time afterwards. They had both stood up, covered in blood and grime, clothes ripped and dirty, and met each other’s eyes. They didn’t know who moved first and they didn’t care, but they met in the middle in a frenzy of desperation and relief. They came together like magnets and stayed there like they were each other’s oxygen supply.

The first time they slept together was the same day as the kiss. After cleaning each other up, Wesley had kissed him, putting a hand on the back of Callum’s head to keep him there. Not that Callum needed convincing, of course, as Wesley’s kisses were intoxicating. Their first time had been fast-paced and needy, wanting nothing but to map out the other’s body. Their second time was different - it was slow and tender, everything their first hadn’t been, and it was  _ wonderful _ . They fell asleep together for the first time then, too, the best night’s sleep either of them had had in years.

Callum had enemies, as did Wesley. They couldn’t be seen together too often in public, because they were both constantly being followed. Callum had never had a normal, mundane life, but he found himself wanting the simple pleasures of kissing Wesley in public, going on a coffee date, walking under the city lights at night. He could so rarely have these things, but Wesley was worth it.

Callum and Wesley were not the secret lovers of the fifteenth century, but they  _ were _ the secret lovers of the twenty-first. 

The first time Callum told Wesley he loved him was in the dead of night, in the silence of the motel room they were staying in. Wesley had been running his hand up and down Callum’s chest, and Callum couldn’t stop the words from slipping out. Wesley had kissed him before he could panic too much, and said them back (“It’s a good thing I love you too, asshole.”). Neither of them had truly loved someone before, but they were ready to figure it out together.

Callum and Wesley were side-by-side and it would remain that way, whether it be in bed or with guns and knives in hand. Even when they weren’t physically together, their memories, both old and new, ensured that they were never truly without one another. It was always going to be dangerous - the whole Assassin thing guaranteed that - but they were both very good at their jobs and always swore to be in one peace when they saw each other next.

Callum had never had a home before, but he was finding that the home Aguilar had found with his lover, he was finding in Wesley. And he was totally okay with that.

_ “Welcome home, my love.” _

_ “My darling, do you believe that I ever truly left you?” _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! Comments and kudos are always appreciated ^~^
> 
> (lmao it got really sappy at the end but hey, whatevs)


End file.
